GreyWardens.Com - The Dragon Age: Origins DLC Debate.Alot of the arguments about the DLC coming out on Day 1 revolve around
the idea that BioWare/EA are releasing a game without all of the content and
forcing users to pay for the rest of it. This isn’t the way it is though;
The DLC are extra content that do not detract from the main story line/quest
line if you do not have them – they are nifty little ‘cookies’ that can
enhance the game, or not – your choice. The timing is also something that
people are focusing on – but it seems that many forget that the game was set
to be released in early October to start with, the release date was pushed
back (for polishing I believe) and just happened to fall into line with a
date that the DLC would be ready.

As opposed to the greed of wanting every line of code the developers write through launch day to be given to you?

It's funny, the whining in this thread accuses the devs of greed, but I see a whole lot of greed in this thread too. Glass houses guys, glass houses.

The word greed gets bandied around a lot in these forums but everyone is greedy. The goal of a company is to maximize profits. Sometimes a company will make a moral decision but these rarely happen, more often than not most decisions are weighed by what the market will tolerate. A product recall for example is simply an expense to legal costs ratio calculation, sometimes public perception weighs in a bit too. For the most part a company will never care about Flatline or Verno the consumers. Your only power is in your $60, why shouldn't you get the most for it? Once spent you have nothing, no recourse.

People wait years for these games, you shouldn't be surprised that they are upset when told that the game they bought hours beforehand is already outdated. Is it critical to the gameplay experience? Probably not but that doesn't change the perception. How long until companies start chipping away at the core game itself because DLC is more profitable? Day one DLC is a bad precedent to set for the industry as even if one company can conduct itself in a manner that's not harmful to the consumer, you can bet your ass 20 others will not.

Ehm, your logic is astounding , educated customers can never be greedy (unlike companies) - customers want as much as possible for as little money as possible, its called capitalism ^^

Of course.. that also means its perfectly fine for companies to try make more money with things like 0-day DLC, it will make the impatient pay more and the patient pay less, for more.

But that doesn't mean that the patient can't bitch about the stupidity of both the impatient and the companies in question In the end, the only ones hurt by this are the ones buying this game on release day and paying 600$ for all the future DLC while pirates get it for 0$ and patient people for 60$ , when the GOTY comes out.

The only glass house is the the one EA sits in, because customers who are forced to be patient to get full worth for their money tend to be unhappy customers in the future. (Or happy, if they get dragon age goty for 5$ in 2 years) ;p

Edit: In the end this is a jab at both more profits from DLC sales and preventing resale, because DLC is indeed "Non-transferable" content

If any of you folks know Crushbug on these forums he's been part of Bioware's live team for quite some time and posted that they are a separate entity from the original team and make content for post-release.

If it keeps Crushbug around these forums and helps pay his paycheck I'm all for supporting the DLC.

Bottom Line - Do not buy this game on release day - save the money for the GOTY edition with all the DLC

Unfortunately... this is the way the industry is heading.

I'm not saying that Dragon Age will be incomplete upon release... but the gaming industry is heading that way... they'll sell you half a game... make you either buy more DLC, or use DLC as their "DRM" to get the rest of the game (Sims 3 does this I think)... then release a GOTY (or Deluxe) edition with everything in it, later.

I'm all for waiting for GOTY editions... heck, usually the game is patched decently by that point too - which is even more value for your money.

Yeah, no kidding. You fucking lazy burger-munching American fatso slobs need to get off your collective fat asses and get to work on making your $ suck less so that us superior beings in Europe don't get ripped off by you n00bs no more. That is all. kthx .

RPGs tend to be long games, and DLC tends to be relatively short. In a 20+ hour long game, I'm not going to notice if there are 2 less hours of content or one less NPC. When I played through Mass Effect the first time, I certainly didn't miss Bring Down the Sky not being there. I didn't finish it and think, "Oh how I wish there had been one more hour worth of content!" It was a complete game to me, and I enjoyed it.

I plan to buy DA:O soon after it's released, enjoy it for a while, and then decide what I want to do about the DLC.

The issue isn't a rip off its that fact that the retail STORE CE version does not get the Wardens DLC for free but the Digital Deluxe Edition (which is region locked to america/canada for most europeans outside of EA Stores 50% higher price) gets it.

The issue is that DDE version costs 75€ or 115$ to Germans. And the Wardens DLC costs 7€ - thats nearly 12$ and there is no way to get all the pre-order content (why is it not in the CE!)

The fact is that all versions are crap because none include ALL the available content. If its relevant content or not is out of question, its about the principle that there isn't just 1 pre-order item for all pre-orders (that would be cool) but there is 50 of em for 50 different stores and for each version a different one to boot.

Bottom Line - Do not buy this game on release day - save the money for the GOTY edition with all the DLC , or get the unlock crack for the game illegally.. there is no reason why people should support this kind of bs.

And that said - they could have showed good will and unlock all DLC (including the 0-day DLC) for people who bought the CE when they register their game online.

The only thing i agree is that they are not forcing us at all - except you want to buy a incomplete game. Incomplete is defined by "DLC available vs DLC you get when you buy it"

One hell of a silly article. There are a million aspects to any game that are "extra content" that are "nifty little cookies that can enhance the game." That's what makes a game more than just an abstraction. Charging for stuff like this on day 1 is greed and, more than that, stupidity as it chases short term profit over long term customer satisfaction.